MSHA's "Mine Safety and Health at a Glance" report, dated 27 February 2026, counts 28 mining fatalities in fiscal year 2025, across 12,568 mines and 327,465 miners. In 1978, the first year under the Mine Act, 242 miners died. The long decline is real. So is the number that is left.
This post is about one idea: where a person can be moved away from a hazard by remote operation, automation or monitoring, the software that does the moving becomes part of the safety system. It is not a claim that any product prevents injuries. It is a list of what that software has to get right.
What the numbers say
All figures below are from the sources linked at the end, with the dates they carry.
| Fiscal year | All mining fatalities | Coal | Metal and nonmetal |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 41 | 10 | 31 |
| 2024 | 31 | 11 | 20 |
| 2025 | 28 | 5 | 23 |
Source: MSHA, Mine Safety and Health at a Glance, 27 February 2026. The totals include contractors, who accounted for 7 of the 28 deaths in fiscal 2025.
MSHA's fatality reports page, read on 18 October 2026, lists 27 entries for calendar 2026 up to 8 October. Eight of them are classified as powered haulage, five as machinery, and the rest are spread across falls of roof or rib, falling rock, slips and falls, explosives and handling material. A note on that page says one January entry was first attributed to medical causes, so treat the count as a snapshot, not a final tally.
BLS adds another view. In its Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries for 2024 (released 19 February 2026), mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction recorded 92 fatal injuries, 27 of them classed as contact incidents. Underground mining machine operators had 12 fatal injuries, a rate of 35.6 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers, against a rate far lower for workers overall.
Where remote operation and monitoring can help
The hazards in MSHA's list are physical: vehicles, moving machinery, ground that falls, gas and dust. Technology can reduce how long a person stands near them.
- Remote operation of haulage, drilling and loading equipment from a control room on the surface puts the operator outside the working face.
- Automation can handle repetitive cycles where an operator would otherwise stand close to moving machinery.
- AI assisted monitoring of camera, proximity and environmental feeds can raise an alert faster than a person watching one screen. A human still decides what to do about it.
None of this is free of new risk. A remote operator who loses video, a control link that drops, or a machine that runs on tampered firmware are new ways to fail. Each one is a software problem.
What the software must get right
- Safe stop that does not depend on the network. If the link drops, the machine has to stop or hold in a known state on its own. The stop path should live on the machine, not in a cloud service. Test it by pulling the cable.
- Human approval for changes that matter. An AI model can propose a route change or a setpoint. A named person with the right role approves anything that moves equipment or changes a safety limit. The approval and the identity behind it are recorded.
- Secure updates. Firmware and software arriving on a machine underground should be signed, checked against an inventory of what is supposed to be installed, and rolled back if the check fails. An unsigned update channel is a way to put changed code in front of a haul truck.
- Tamper evident logs. After an incident, investigators need to know what the system was told to do, by whom, and what it did. Logs should be append only, time stamped from a trusted source and stored off the machine, so that someone cannot quietly edit them.
- Offline operation. Many mines have little or no usable internet. Scanning, policy checks and any AI assistance must work with no outbound connection, and updates should arrive by a controlled, verified transfer.
- A known software inventory. If you cannot list what runs on each machine, you cannot say whether a newly published vulnerability affects it.
What to do now
- Write a one page list of every remotely operated or automated system, and what each one does if its link, its power or its model fails.
- Ask each vendor for a software bill of materials for the control software and the firmware, in CycloneDX or SPDX.
- Check that inventory against the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Anything listed there that is reachable from your network goes to the top of the patching queue.
- Decide which actions need human approval, and confirm the approval is enforced in software, not only in a procedure document.
- Test the offline case: run your scanning and policy checks with the network cable out.
How Safeguard fits, and where it stops
Safeguard does not drive mining equipment, and this post does not say it saves lives or reduces injuries. What it does is on the software supply chain side: SBOM generation and import, vulnerability scanning with known exploited status and reachability, firmware, container and dependency scanning, policy gates, audit logs, and deployment on premises or fully air gapped with offline models. A local runner keeps source code on site and pushes only encrypted results.
Try it yourself
Take one control application your site runs and ask what happens if its newest dependency is replaced. The demo below walks through running a scan with a local runner, so code stays on your machine.
Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.
Quick check
Why should the safe stop live on the machine and not in a cloud service?
Because mines often lose connectivity, and a stop that depends on the network fails exactly when it is needed. The machine must reach a known safe state on its own.
Why are contractors worth calling out in the MSHA data?
MSHA's figures include contractor employees, and contractors accounted for 7 of the 28 fatalities in fiscal 2025. Remote and automated systems often involve outside vendors, so their software and access need the same review as your own.
What does a software bill of materials let you answer?
Whether a newly published vulnerability affects software actually running on a given machine, without waiting for each vendor to tell you.
Sources
- MSHA, Mine Safety and Health at a Glance, 27 February 2026
- MSHA, fatality reports, read 18 October 2026
- BLS, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries 2024, released 19 February 2026
- BLS, Table A-1, industry by event or exposure, 2024
- BLS chart, fatal work injuries in selected occupations, 2024
- CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
